NVIDIA facing 51 lawsuits over price-fixing

Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) on Thursday said 51 civil complaints have been filed against it as of May 14 alleging price fixing and anti-competitive agreements, among other things, between Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD).

Nvidia, of Santa Clara, Calif., makes programmable graphic processors. Advanced Micro Devices entered the graphics processor market with its acquisition of ATI Technologies Inc. last October. As reported last December, Nvidia and ATI Technologies account for the lion's share of graphics chips that are sold as independent products, with sales leadership regularly shifting back and forth between the companies.

In its annual report filed March 16 with Securities and Exchange Commission, Nvidia said 42 civil complaints as of March 14 were filed against it on the same allegations. Nvidia said Thursday in a quarterly report filed with the SEC that a majority of the lawsuits were filed in the Northern District of California; several were filed in the Central District of California and other cases were filed in several other federal district courts. The company reiterated that the lawsuits are putative class-actions alleging classes of direct or indirect purchasers of Nvidia's graphic processing units and cards.